Oct. 2, 2026
The record will show that the defibrillation of the 2026 season for the Phillies lasted almost exactly 30 hours. The official demise of another so-called Phillies World Series contender came at exactly 11:01 p.m. on Oct. 1.
Now what?
OK, let’s start with the low-hanging fruit:
Goodbye, Dave Dombrowski. Please.
Goodbye, Don Mattingly. He’s not the answer.
Goodbye, Trea Turner. The strikeout and error machine.
Goodbye, Bryce Harper. I’ve seen enough. Have you?
And goodbye, analytics. Numbers are overrated.
The big move, of course, would be to put the over-the-hill director of baseball operations out of his six years of misery here. Dombrowski never got the third championship both he personally in his 38-year tenure as a baseball executive and the Phillies as a 144-year-old sports franchise were so desperately seeking.
All you needed to understand about how dysfunctional Dombrowski’s team had become was to watch the urgent final strategic decisions designed to cover up all the holes the long-time GM had left on his roster.
Mattingly has so few palatable bullpen options in the series with Atlanta that he started the seventh inning of Game 1 with his closer, Jhoan Duran, who had never – not once – appeared that early in a big-league game. And the savior of Game 2, Andrew Painter, was a young starter who was getting his first real taste of a relief role with the season at stake.
Game 3 was an exercise in even greater absurdity. Nola, who has just gotten bludgeoned on two days’ rest, started it on three days’ rest this time and served up one last meatball in another lousy season for him. Then there was an even crazier twist; ace Zack Wheeler entered the game in a relief role, the second of his 311 appearances on an MLB mound. As Ozzie Albie’s two-run homer left the ballpark in the fourth inning, so, too, did another Phillies season.
The truth is, there were no good options in that pathetic bullpen. The idea of using any of the other relievers was a (pun-intended) non-starter, at least in Mattingly’s mind. All three players Dombrowski added to the roster at the trade deadline, including lefty relief specialist Brooks Raley, never made it to the postseason. Except for Duran, who was shaky at the end himself, waving for a reliever became a losing game of Name Your Poison. They all sucked.
It would be a pointless exercise to draw up a list of all the failings of the offense. All you needed to see was the final batter from Dombrowski’s dubious bench step into the batter’s box. The final out was a strikeout by Braves ace Chris Sale of the immortal Otto Kemp, who batted .080 this season.
This is nothing short of dreadful roster-building. And when you factor in the enormous $300-million payroll Dombrowski had to work with – fourth highest in MLB – there is simply no reason to keep the GM around for the final year of his own bloated contract.
Once Dombrowski is let go – we can only hope – it goes without saying that Mattingly needs to leave with him, both because he panicked in the final days of the season and because he acquiesced to the demand for analytics long after the numbers game had proven to be a loser.
Was there ever a moment during the five months of Mattingly’s interim tenure as manager when he actually looked like he was enjoying himself? If so, I missed it. He was a great baseball player who never figured out how to reach an equally high level running a team. Goodbye.
The biggest question about Harper is whether the new GM will be able to find a sucker to take on at least a chunk of the five years and $118 million left on a contract he actually tried to get extended a couple of seasons ago.
Yes, he hit the tying home run that supported the big comeback in Game 2, but he also created the crisis by misplaying a line drive in right field that gave the Braves the lead. When he ran, far too late, after strike three rolled all the way near the backstop in the eighth inning of Game 3, it just underscored how egocentric and just downright intolerable his time with the Phillies has become.
Harper is still a good player, but no more elite than he was last year, when Dombrowski openly wondered if his superstar was past his peak. Well, it’s obvious now that Harper is way past his peak. The next five years are going to be painful for us to witness, unless there’s a way to discount his contract until another desperate team expresses some interest.
An even worse contract than Harper’s is that of Trea Turner, a bad shortstop with rapidly declining bat skills. Turner struck out an ungodly 131 times this season. He embodies what is wrong with analytics. I wonder what the launch angle would be if the Phillies catapulted the seven years and $191 million still owed to Turner right out of town. I’m pretty sure the exit velocity would be very impressive.
I watched every pitch of all three playoff games, and what I saw was a Phillies team that can do none of the small-ball things well – can’t hit behind the runner, can’t bunt, can’t make consistent contact, can’t field any position well (except catcher) and relies entirely too much on home runs.
Let me put it more plainly for the doubters out there. The Phillies have been a dumb team ever since they adopted the stat-based blueprint that has created all of the weaknesses spelled out in the previous paragraph. At last count, 40 analytics nerds are employed by the organization, helping the manager set up his lineup, align his bullpen and adopt whatever strategy those sacred numbers dictated.
As far as I’m concerned, this playoff loss has a silver lining. It screams for change. It demands a thorough study of how to navigate a sport dealing more and more with the debate over how much to use analytics.
With Dombrowski out (please), Mattingly out (one year was enough) and Turner and Harper out (if only in our dreams), maybe the Phillies can finally turn the page on this disappointing era and find a new pathway to success.
What they have been doing over the past decade is never going to work.
They must realize this by now, don’t you think?